The South Carolina governor denies that she’s the subject of any IRS probe of her father’s Sikh temple, because she never kept its books:

Gov. Nikki Haley vehemently denied Thursday that she is in any way connected to a 2011 tax audit of the Sikh temple in Chapin where her parents are leaders.

“It is flat out not true,” Haley said of speculation that has swirled around the State House for weeks that she is tied to the IRS audit of the Broad River Road temple.

“I have never kept their books. I’ve never made deposits. I never signed checks. I never did financial statements,” Haley said. “This is a church that I don’t go to. There are no issues related to me and that church.”

I hate to engage in “question the timing” games, but here goes: Gov. Haley’s star has rusted a bit since her election in 2010, but she has remained in vice presidential conversations. She’s a bright young governor with a fairly strong record and she’s extremely likeable and telegenic, and she’s a female minority. She has a record of thrashing Obama’s NLRB when it assaulted Boeing in South Carolina. She’s governor of a state that the Republicans expect to win, though, so she doesn’t really haul in any electoral votes for the GOP ticket. Nevertheless, she endorsed Mitt Romney, Romney is locking up the nomination, and suddenly there are unsubstantiated rumors that she’s under some kind of investigation and possible indictment.

It’s curious, is all I’m saying. Gov. Haley’s gender, race and record all maker her a strategic target for the medialeft, which cannot abide strong, conservative minorities at all, and when they’re women then they must be destroyed.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

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1.
Mike Giles

Wasn’t one of the charges against Nixon, during Watergate, was that he was using politically targeted IRS audits against perceived enemies?

Pre-emptive strike. Preparing the battlefield. Whatever you want to call it. Anyone who is a potential VP will be seeing action. They gotta get the narrative formed early enough for it to take hold. “Nikki Haley, once suspected of tax fraud….” Whispers and innuendo.

And it is not just VP candidates, really. They have to make the entire Repub Party toxic, damage the brand. Repub stars have to be hit as hard as possible.

Look, Nikki Haley is a Christian by conversion but a full-blooded Sikh by heritage – a warrior race that never backs down from a fight. Those who accused her of infidelity during her gubernatorial campaign found that out when she confronted them, refused to back down and demanded they prove their charges. We see her doing the same in this farce. If Sarah Palin is a pit-bull with lipstick, Haley is a pitbull with lipstick and a dagger. Her feckless political enemies would be well advised to stick to the issues and forget the dirty tricks, which she will simply shove down their throats.

The Sikh were founded to fight the Islamic Mughal invaders 600 years ago.
Sikh here in CA are traditionally Republican, and not seen as friends of either the Administration nor Ayatollah Obama’s Iranian pals.

And like Palin, not all her enemies are Democrats and leftist crackpots. The depraved sexual misconduct charges were brought against Haley by SC GOP regulars, just as Palin’s most powerful opposition in AK were the big oil-corrupted Republicans (can you say “Lisa Murkowski?”).

It’s as if many Republican establishment males are fighting a “war on their OWN women.”

We lost a perfectly good governor here in AZ once in retaliation for the governor of Arkansas being sent to prison. Fife Symington’s conviction was eventually overturned. The US attorney who prosecuted Symington was none other than Janet Napolitano.